The HISD UIL Academics Department will host the second annual Academic College Signing Day next week for the district’s top University Interscholastic League (UIL) Academics, Music, and One Act Play students.
With the district closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s signing day, which will be held at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, June 10, will be virtual and all district UIL students are encouraged to participate.
Continue readingThe Houston Independent School District has added six school sites to its curbside Summer Meals program, which launched Monday, June 1.
New locations include:
The Fresh Bus produce delivery program is announcing new community stops to better serve students and families.
The new stops will be located at apartment complexes that surround the 68 participating schools and have high student populations. Families can go direct to their closest pick-up site. No survey or registration is required.
All students enrolled at the 68 participating schools are eligible. A complete list of schools is available at HoustonISD.org/FreshBus.
Continue readingHISD families can now complete the applications necessary to receive Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT), a one-time benefit for families who lost access to free or reduced-price meals due to school closures.
The application is available online at yourtexasbenefits.com/Learn/PEBT and will be open until June 30.
The $1 billion benefit program was approved by the United States Department of Agriculture to help eligible families buy food during the COVID-19 pandemic. The one-time benefit of up to $285 will be issued on an EBT card, which can be used like a debit card to assist families in buying food from any retailer that accepts the Texas Lone Star Card.
Continue readingHouston Independent School District Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan presented 10 high school seniors with 2019-2020 HISD Superintendent Scholars Awards of $5,000 each during surprise visits to their homes over the past two weeks.
This is the third year the scholarships were awarded to graduating seniors who have displayed great character and resilience in the face of adversity. This year’s group of scholars have experienced the traumatic loss of a parent, severe poverty, health issues, immigration-related challenges and homelessness.
Lathan personally selected the 10 students for $5,000 awards from among 45 HISD seniors who were nominated by their principals or leadership teams. The remaining 35 seniors will each receive $1,500 scholarships.
Continue readingThe new Austin High School is now scheduled to open in January 2021 — a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The school was originally scheduled to open in August 2020. HISD Construction Services Officer Derrick Sanders said the new timeline was due to a three-month delay in the school’s furniture shipment and manpower shortages caused by mandated social distancing requirements resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Austin will remain at its current temporary learning center located across South Lockwood Drive until the new facility opens.
Continue readingAs the school year wraps up, the Houston Independent School District is revving up its nutrition outreach efforts with the launch of curbside summer meals for students and the Fresh Bus produce delivery program.
The programs come on the heels of the district’s successful community food distribution initiative, which ran for nine weeks following HISD’s closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coordinated by HISD in partnership with the Houston Food Bank, the program, provided nearly 7 million pounds of food to more than 160,000 families during that time.
“When everything around us was shutting down due to the pandemic, it became essential for us to be there for our students and their families,” HISD Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan said. “I’m proud of the hard work and dedication that went into this effort. Remarkably, we were able to impact so many families.”
The district is aiming to build upon that success with the launch if it’s annual and state-mandated summer meals program, which begins June 1. Families will be able to pick up packaged student meals twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays at one of 71 designated schools across the district. Families will receive several days’ worth of food per child.
HISD Curbside Summer Meals
Students from Bellaire, Lamar, Madison, Milby, Westbury, and Westside high schools collaborated on a dance piece performed in response to a strong poem written and recited by Andrea Minotti, a senior dance student at Westside High School.
“This situation will fade, but we can’t run away from it,” he writes, “so as the days go by, sitting inside, what you will make of it?” Minotti’s powerful message inspired the dancers to express their emotions during this difficult time.
Continue readingThe winners of the HISD and myON Reader by Renaissance Reading Initiative’s second annual Read to Succeed Competition have been announced.
The competition is hosted in partnership with myOn, an online literacy platform, and encourages pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade students to compete against each other to see who read myON books for the most number of minutes.
Continue readingThe Houston Independent School District’s new police chief, Pedro “Pete” Lopez, Jr. was sworn in Tuesday during an official ceremony where he took the oath of office at the district’s Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center.
The chief’s wife took part in the ceremonial badge-pinning portion of the event. Houston Municipal Courts Director and Presiding Judge J. Elaine Marshall administered the oath of office.
Lopez comes to HISD after 32 years of law enforcement experience, with 29 of those years spent serving the Houston Police Department, where he rose from the rank of patrol officer to assistant chief of Patrol Region 1. He has also served with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department and Texas Department of Corrections.
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